


foundations

by danisnopeonfire



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Breaking Up & Making Up, Hurt/Comfort, Internal Conflict, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:15:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28455210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danisnopeonfire/pseuds/danisnopeonfire
Summary: Dan thinks he loves the fish more than Phil does. Phil would disagree, of course, and if Norman were a human child, they would fight for him in court. They would reach an agreement where Dan has him on the weekends, and Phil has him the rest of the time. They would be civil for Norman’s sake. They would make it work.Or,Break-ups are shit. But sometimes an elderly neighbour and a chalet in the French Alps can save you from them.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 32
Kudos: 20





	1. One

Dan didn’t think the relationship would end over a nice haircut, to be honest. He expected a grander exit. Maybe a bit of screaming, a few belongings being chucked out of windows in bin-bags. He didn’t expect it to be calm, and he certainly didn’t expect to find himself at his elderly neighbour’s house just ten minutes afterwards.

Dan puts the casserole dish outside of Doris’ door and steps back. She made them a lasagne last week – he finds now a suitable time to return the dish. It takes a few moments, but Doris comes to the door, squinting at him. She picks up the dish.

“Are you not coming in then?” Her Yorkshire accent is oddly calming. “What are you doing back there?”

“Social distancing, Dor.”

Doris rolls her eyes. She waves her hand at him.

“Sod it. I've been here seventy-eight years, Dan. If I die, I die.”

“I don’t really want that on my conscience.”

“Too much on it already?” she asks. When Dan doesn’t reply, she makes a small noise. “Phil again?”

Dan looks at the dish in Doris’ hands. There’s a bit of tomato sauce stuck to the edge of it that he didn’t clean off. It’s so obvious, looking at it now. How did he miss it? He hopes Doris won’t notice. He hopes her eyesight has surpassed the point of small tomato sauce stains.

“It’s over, Doris,” he says.

“You’ve said that before, Dan. You’re over, and then you’re back on, and then you’re not. I feel like a yo-yo!”

“No, really. We’re over this time.” 

He wants to tell her about the haircut that ended his relationship – the straw that broke the camel’s back. But he realises Doris would tell him he’s sulking. She doesn’t get it. He wants to say, _Yes, Doris, you have much more life experience than I do, but you don’t understand how I am feeling. You don’t see that the world is ending. How can you see that when you probably can’t see the tomato sauce on your casserole dish?_

He doesn’t say that. Instead, he just looks at Doris, and Doris looks back. She must recognise something in his eyes.

“Well, shit,” she says. There’s genuine remorse in it. “Do you want a brandy?”

Dan laughs. It’s a sad, barely-there noise, but it’s a laugh. It’s the first laugh he’s had all day, actually.

“Please.”

Doris nods and wanders inside with the casserole dish. Dan tries not to think about the tomato stain on it. He tries to think about other things instead, like the boyfriend he left at home watching _Cash in the Attic._

The _ex_ -boyfriend. 

God, that’s weird. That’s going to take some getting used to. A lot of things are going to take some getting used to. Will he talk about Phil in the past tense now? Phil’s not dead, but he’s in the past – or he soon will be. He’ll soon be in Dan’s past. _Phil was a good boyfriend_ , Dan imagines himself saying. _Phil was a good man_. _Phil was good, but not good enough. Phil was good enough for everyone except me. Phil was..._

Doris appears again with two brandys. She places one of them on the short wall outside of her house, then steps back so Dan can take it.

“I suppose you’ll want to disinfect that before you drink it,” she says.

“I trust you.” Dan smiles. He points to the drink in Doris’ hand. “What’s your excuse?”

“Drinking in sympathy. No offence, love, but it would be quite pathetic if a young man drank alone on his elderly neighbour’s driveway.”

“Right.”

Because drinking _with_ his elderly neighbour isn’t pathetic at all.

He takes a sip of the brandy and it’s awful, so he finishes the rest of it in one big gulp to get it over with. It’s a real rip-the-plaster-off technique. It’s the same technique he’s most comfortable with. He ripped the plaster off when he quit his part-time job at Asda. He tore the plaster off when he dropped out of university. He yanked the plaster off when he broke up with Phil.

Except that plaster was tough. Part of it got caught along the way, and now he’s sore.

“You’re not crying,” Doris points out.

“Should I be?”

“I would be,” she says. “But then again, I cried at Loose Women this morning.”

“I’m not much of a crier.”

“When was the last time you cried?”

It was nearly two years ago. Dan remembers, because it was all very embarrassing – he made a proper spectacle of himself. It was in the middle of A&E. Phil broke his big toe, and Dan worked it up in his mind that the poor guy would be limping for the rest of his life, and for some reason that made him very sad – imagining Phil with a limp. Phil didn’t limp for the rest of his life. He was fine, no limp at all, but he let Dan wait on him hand and foot for the next six months.

“Can’t remember,” Dan says.

“It works, you know,” Doris tells him. “Crying. The stiff upper lip thing – that’s all fine. But you’ll go mad if you don’t let it out sometimes.”

“I already feel mad, Doris.”

“I bet you do. God, Dan, you’ve got a life of work and mortgage payments ahead of you. That’s shit. I’ve got my pension and my cats. I’d feel mad if I were in your position.”

Dan shakes his head. His neighbour, forever the optimist.

“So have a cry about it,” she continues. “Get as much of those tears out as possible before they drown you.”

“Maybe I’ll chop onions for dinner.”

“Good lad.” She smiles. “Watch a sad film while you’re at it.”

“That might be a step too far.”

Doris chuckles. Dan smiles, looking into his empty brandy glass. It’s weird how his first instinct after breaking up with Phil had been to come here. It’s not like Doris is very good at emotional support. She swears a lot, and likes to complain about things like the government and bin-men, and really, Dan doesn’t feel any better for seeing her. He doesn’t feel any worse either, which he supposes is something. Maybe feeling neutral is what he needs right now.

“You’ll be alright, you know,” Doris says. “After this. You will.”

“I know.” He fiddles with the brandy cup. “I think I’ll just sulk first.”

“Don’t sulk too much. If the wind changes, your face will stick like that.”

It’s stupid, and he’s never understood that phrase, but it makes him laugh – his second laugh of the day. Both of them thanks to Doris. Doris who can’t see the stain on her casserole dish, but can maybe see what Dan is going through.

-

There’s no rule book for breaking up with someone. 

All of the answers on Google tell Dan to eat ice-cream and binge Netlix shows. Some even tell him to slander Phil’s good name via Twitter likes. He doesn’t want to do that, though. He wants to figure out who keeps the fish. Phil bought Norman, yes. Phil named him, Phil decorated his tank, Phil bought fish-food imported from Japan, and sang to him sometimes. Phil practically birthed him. But Dan loves him. Dan thinks he loves the fish more than Phil does. Phil would disagree, of course, and if Norman were a human child, they would fight for him in court. They would reach an agreement where Dan has him on the weekends, and Phil has him the rest of the time. They would be civil for Norman’s sake. They would make it work.

Currently, Dan’s got Norman on his lap in a smaller bowl. He just finished deep-cleaning the main tank and now he’s sitting on the couch in front of the TV with the fish. He got back from Doris’ a couple of hours ago. It all feels very final, if he’s honest. His living room suddenly doesn’t feel like his living room. It feels like a waiting room, or a train station platform. It feels like a place where nothing is permanent. This isn’t his living room, and he’s not Dan. He’s a passerby keeping the chair warm for the next person.

The BBC News at Six is playing in the background – something about politics. Boris Johnson is cross because his latest Brexit deal was rejected again.

_Yes, but I have broken up with my boyfriend,_ Dan says out loud. _I don’t love him anymore, and he doesn’t love me. Our fish doesn’t have a home._

It’s at this moment that Phil walks in with a pair of white Calvin Klein boxers in his hand. His eyes are tired, a bit puffy. His hair is sticking up in funny places. He’s wearing a hoodie that has jam stains on it from breakfast – the last breakfast they shared as a couple. Dan probably would have had something more interesting than Cornflakes if he’d known. There’s some greek yoghurt in the fridge.

“Are these mine or yours?” Phil holds up the boxers for Dan to see.

Dan recognises the boxers well, but it’s anyone’s guess who they belong to. When you spend enough time with someone, parts of you and parts of them start to bleed into one another, until you’re one big part with no discernible features. Apparently, this extends to underwear, too.

“I don’t know. But you can just take them,” Dan says.

“I’m not taking them if they’re not mine.”

“It’s just underwear, Phil. It’s fine.”

Phil sighs. He looks aggravated, which is fair – Dan is aggravated, too. They just differ in how they show their aggravation. Dan will ruminate at 3am with some sad music and even sadder thoughts, and Phil will fuss over small things like Calvin Klein boxers and tenancy agreements. It’s part of why their communication is so bad. It’s part of why they’ve been stagnant in their unhappiness for such a long time.

“And anyway, what about Norman?” Dan asks.

“What about him?”

“Well...we can’t split him in half. Who will he live with?”

Phil stares at the small fishbowl for a moment, then sits down on the adjacent couch. It’s the one they usually reserve for guests. It’s strange, seeing Phil sit there. Kath should be sitting there, or maybe Doris when she comes round to talk shit about the other neighbours. Last week, that couch was filled with stuff. Just clutter and things that needed to be moved to their right homes. Now, the couch is filled with Phil. That couch – it’s not theirs. Not really.

“I assumed I would take him,” Phil says simply. “It was my idea to adopt him.”

“Oh.”

“Is that a problem?”

Yes. Yes, that’s a problem. That is Dan’s fish son that he loves very much. He doesn’t want to lose him, really. There’s a lot of love tied up in that fish, a lot of handling and patience invested in him. Dan was going to teach him to swim through a hoop. If Phil took Norman, all of that would be gone. Truly, Dan would rather lose shares in a thriving business than lose the bond he created with Norman. He knows that fish are not emotionally intelligent creatures, but if any fish is going to break that rule, it would be this one. Norman is not a stupid fish. He sees Dan and Phil as more than the large hands that occasionally drop food into his house.

“Dan?” Phil asks. He’s toying with the white boxers in his hands, stretching the material taut. Dan studies them again, and he recognises them, he thinks. They’re his. He remembers buying them. 

Or did he buy them for Phil?

Dan clears his throat. “I mean...can’t we share him?”

“What?”

The way Phil glottalises that t – it sounds like an insult. His northern accent sounds mean all of a sudden. Dan remembers when it didn’t sound mean at all. He remembers their early Skype calls when he loved that accent, when his favourite way of flirting with Phil was to make fun of him for how he said words like “butter”.

“ _Bu’er_ ,” Dan had laughed, many moons ago. “ _That’s fucking priceless. Say it again, one last time. Bu’er._ ”

Phil always indulged him, always said his funny little northern things for Dan’s amusement. Now, Dan doesn’t really want to hear them. He suddenly wants to hear his family talk in their Winnie the Pooh language, pompous in a way he thinks would be comforting right now. He wants to forget that northern accents exist at all. Maybe he’ll call his mum. That’s what you do after a break-up, isn’t it? Go to your mum?

“I’m just saying,” Dan continues. “Maybe I can have him sometimes. The odd weekend, maybe.”

Phil blinks. “He’s a fish. Are you serious?”

“Yes, I’m serious.”

It’s convenient how Norman is suddenly just a fish now. If he’s just a fish, why is he all over Phil’s Instagram feed? If he’s just a fish, why do they spend more money on him than themselves? If he’s just a fish, why does Phil want to keep him so badly?

“And he’s not just a fish, is he?” Dan continues. He’s saying it to Norman now. He wishes he could cover Norman’s ears to shield him from his fighting parents. He wishes he could cover his own ears, too. “He’s part of the family.”

“There’s no family, Dan,” Phil supplies. “It’s two people and a fish, and the fish needs to go somewhere.”

Toss a coin for him, is what Dan would usually suggest. Maybe a hearty game of rock-paper-scissors. But he has too much respect for Norman to gamble for him like he’s on the same level as taking the bins out, and he would probably lose anyway. Phil is too good at preempting him in rock-paper-scissors. But then again, maybe such abilities dwindle when you fall out of love with someone.

“Besides…” Phil clears his throat. “You did the breaking up. You really gonna take this from me, too?”

And – fair. He hasn’t got an argument for that. Dan takes away the relationship, Phil takes away the fish. He supposes that’s an appropriate deal.

“Okay,” Dan relents. “But he stays here until you have your own place?”

“Sure. That works.”

“Thank you.”

Dan looks down at the fish. Norman is just swimming in place. He seems to be staring at Matt Hancock’s large face on the TV. Dan reaches for the remote and changes the channel so he has something nicer to stare at. The remaining five minutes of an episode of _Come Dine With Me_.

The plan is: Phil will go to stay with his parents from tomorrow, and Dan will stay here while they both look for new places. The rent on their current house is too steep for them to pay individually, and there’s also an early termination fee and the cost of removal vans. It’s all a lot to think about, considering they broke up only a few hours ago. Dan just wants a few days to exist in his bedroom alone. That’s what his mind and body are crying out for.

The thing about Dan is – he’s always the one to be broken up with, never the one to do the breaking up. The last time he broke up with someone was in year five of primary school. He’d been so scared of the girl’s reaction – he knew she was a crier. He got his friend to do the breaking up for him, paid him in Fruit Winders, and then spent the next week off school claiming an upset tummy. But it’s not like that with Phil. He can’t just drop the bomb and leave. He has to drop the bomb and watch it detonate around them, watch everything they made and own turn into rubble. He has to stay long enough to see their fish become an orphan.

“Mum called,” Phil says. “She called you a few names.”

“Did she?”

“She said you’re a brat.”

“Right.”

“And a loser.” 

“Okay. Anything else?”

Phil shrugs. “She’s upset.”

He supposes that’s fair. Kath has been holding a torch for their relationship since the day it began. The torch shined brightest in moments when their relationship was rocky, which has been for a long time, really. It feels cruel, hurting Kath this way – like kicking a puppy or taking sweets from a kid. It’s like hurting someone who’s not expecting it, someone who doesn’t think it’s possible to be hurt that way. Kath probably thought they’d go on forever. Maybe she thought they were as sure as the sun rising each morning.

“ _B_ _ut what if it doesn’t rise?_ ” Dan remembers asking, seven years old.

“ _T_ _hen we die,_ ” his dad responded.

Dan doesn’t suppose he will die from breaking up with Phil, but maybe a piece of him will. Maybe a piece of Kath will, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!! thoughts are always appreciated :)
> 
> [(tumblr post)](https://danisnopeonfire.tumblr.com/post/639034704539025408/foundations-chapter-1)


	2. Two

“You’ve got the ick, Dan,” Doris had told him one night last summer. It was a cool night, quite calm. It was the longest night of the year, and Dan remembers this because he told Phil that he thought the sun would never set. It was the kind of night you could stay in forever, and be quite happy with it. Dan had been bringing the clothes in from the washing line. Doris was watching him from her side of the fence. She had come outside for a chat, and Dan was in the middle of telling her about the giant pimple that Phil popped that morning. He was caught off guard, however, by Doris’ words.

“I haven’t got the ick, Doris.”

“You have. It’s written all over your face.”

“No, I haven’t. Do you know what the ick means?”

Doris just smiled. She looked harmless then, in her pink dressing-gown and slippers, but Dan understood the devious look in her eye.

“They were talking about it on Love Island last night,” she said. “You know, when you’re suddenly put off by someone. The ick.”

Dan shook his head. He took one of Phil’s socks off the line and started searching for the matching one.

“Careful. It’ll rot your brain, that show.”

“It’s already rotten, Dan.”

“Is it?” 

_There are about ten blue socks on this sodding line_ , he thought. _Where’s the matching green one?_

“It’s rusty,” Doris said. She knocked on her head with her knuckles. “I’m not a spring chicken anymore.”

“You look like a spring chicken,” Dan flirted.

“Oi!” she yelled, but she looked delighted. “Don’t make me bring your boyfriend out here.”

Dan chuckled. He was still searching the washing line for the ghostly apparition that was his boyfriend’s sock.

“Doris, can you see a green sock anywhere?”

Doris studied the line for a moment, then pointed. With a meek smile, Dan retrieved the missing sock.

“In my defence, it is quite dark,” he said.

“Sounds like someone else’s brain is rotting.”

He understood, quite easily, what she was hinting at.

“I haven’t got the ick, Doris.” He gave her a look. “Phil and I are fine.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She waved him off. “So continue. You were telling me about the pimple ordeal.”

So Dan launched back into the story. Something about whiteheads and yellow puss getting on their couch, someting about Dan almost being sick at the murder scene on Phil’s chin – _“That has_ got _to leave a scar!_ ” But Dan didn’t have the ick, as Doris liked to say. The ick was for people who were unlucky in love. Dan was neither. He was actually very lucky, and very in love.

-

The morning after breaking up with Phil, he thinks about tea.

There has to be a first for everything in life. Like the first time you say _I love you_ , or the first time you have a wee in the new year, or hear a song that will soon become your favourite. There are firsts for everything, and there are lasts, too. For example, when you lock eyes with a stranger you will never see again. That is both a first, and a last. When Dan wakes up the morning after breaking up with Phil, his first thought is tea, and his second is who will make it.

Phil is the tea-maker in their house, but Phil is also leaving in a few hours. That leaves a tea-making position to be filled, and a moral dilemma in Dan’s mind. Dan stands at the entrance to the kitchen with his moral dilemma, wringing his hands together. (The moral dilemma is: can Dan, the person who broke Phil’s heart yesterday, ask Phil to make him a cup of tea?). He would really like one. Tea tastes better when it’s prepared by someone else. It’s like how food tastes amazing when you take it from someone else’s plate, but when it’s on your own, it tastes wildly plain. Dan really likes Phil’s tea, but he likes not being a dick even more.

He ignores the squabbling in his brain and walks into the kitchen. Phil has got his back to him. The soft tinkling of a spoon hitting china is the only sound to be heard as he stirs his tea. If Dan were smaller, maybe people wouldn’t hear him before they see him. Maybe he would be the type of person to sneak into rooms, and people would say, “Oh, there you are.” Or they might say, “You’re so little. I just want to protect you.” But he’s not little – he’s actually quite large – and Phil turns around at the sound of his footsteps. They assess each other for a few moments. They’re taking each other in, as if for the first time. Then:

“D’you want a brew?” Phil asks.

They both must realise at the same time – how automatically that question is asked. It makes Dan freeze, and makes Phil frown. Phil looks like he knows he’s cross with himself for something – he knows he got part of this wrong – but he can’t figure out what it is. If Dan weren’t so tired and tea-deprived, it would make him spiral.

“Um.” Dan clears his throat. “I think I’ll have water. Thanks, though.”

Phil nods – it’s a bit too quick. As Dan walks to the sink, he’s thinking about how it’s been years since he drank water at breakfast. It’s always tea or coffee – Phil’s tea or coffee. _Liquid gold_.

“ _Right, how do you–_ _these are the same fucking teabags, Phil!_ ” Dan remembers a younger version of himself whining. _“How does yours taste so much better?”_

_“Magic, Daniel. Magic.”_

Looking back on it now, Dan supposes it was – magic, that is. There’s magic to be found in the effects we have on each other. It’s magical how an ordinary cup of tea can be turned into liquid gold, given the right person, and the right circumstances. We can think we’re drinking the entire universe from a cup, and that’s magical.

Dan sips his water. It’s cold, and he just brushed his teeth. That combination makes his gums burn something chronic.

“So Martyn is gonna come at 12–”

“What time are you–”

They cut each other off. It’s like one of those scenes from a rom-com. The ones where you can see that the two characters are starting to mould into each other. They’re becoming one – it’s all very romantic – and then one of them will laugh shyly and say, “Sorry, go ahead.” 

Dan laughs, but not because it’s romantic. He laughs because it’s so uncomfortable to be standing with a stranger in his kitchen.

“Yeah, so Martyn will be here at 12,” Phil says again. He looks determined.

Dan nods. “Do you want any help with, like, you know?”

He doesn’t know.

“It’s fine. We’ve got a van, so we’ll just put my stuff in there.”

“A van?”

“Yeah. One of Martyn’s mates let him borrow it.”

“Oh, right.” Dan tries to imagine Phil driving a van, but it’s hard. It’s like trying to imagine a colour that doesn’t exist. “Is a van necessary?”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re very big.”

“I have a lot of stuff.” Phil shrugs.

Does he? Dan supposes he hadn’t noticed, or maybe he forgot. This _house_ has a lot of stuff, sure, but it’s difficult to discern where Phil’s stuff ends and Dan’s begins. It’s just stuff, as far as Dan is concerned. Towels they both share, extensive video game collections, cutlery and dishes that seem to have always been here. Dan thinks that trying to figure out whose stuff is whose would be like performing a surgical operation.

“ _Phil, that towel actually feels like sandpaper._ ” _Dan laughed. They’d just moved into the house, and they didn’t have many things._ _The one towel they owned was practically a biohazard._ “ _We’re not keeping it!_ ”

_Phil whined. It was a stupid, endearing sound. “It’s my lucky towel.”_

_“What’s lucky about drying yourself with sandpaper?”_

_“This bad boy survived three years of uni halls, Dan.” Phil stroked the towel like it meant something to him. He then gave Dan a playful look. “Really wanna drip-dry all over the new carpet?”_

They still have it upstairs somewhere. It’s probably stuffed away in the cupboard that stores things they don’t use but can’t part with. They have new towels now – they’re plush and white and big enough for human-burrito purposes (they’ve tried). Dan wonders briefly if Phil will take the towels with him in the van. He doesn’t mind, as long as Phil takes the sandpaper towel, too. He will quite happily see the back of that.

“So are you all packed?” Dan asks. Then he asks himself, _Did we always make small-talk like this?_

“Pretty much.” Phil takes a long sip of his tea. “Just some last-minute laundry to finish before mum tries to do it. You know how she is.”

“Like a bloodhound for unwashed clothes?”

“Exactly.”

“Like, if there’s one stray sock in the vicinity, she’ll burst through concrete to find it?”

“Nothing will keep Kath from her washing machine.”

“You’ll have to fight her off with a stick,” Dan says.

Phil chuckles. That sound – the familiarity of it – does something. It reaches in and touches the part of Dan’s brain that’s on fire. It pours water all over it, and quenches him, and soothes his burns. Dan wants more of it – he wants it more than the awful small-talk they’re enduring. He wants to ward off that awful small-talk, push it down into its cage, so he blurts, “Your mum washed my boxers once.”

It’s enough to make Phil choke on his tea. He sputters a bit as he reaches for some kitchen roll, wiping his mouth.

“Did she?”

“Yeah,” Dan says. “Did I not tell you that?”

“No. God. That’s horrifying.”

“It was the first time I stayed at your house. Knew I had to impress you. Almost died when I saw your mum loading my pants into the wash.”

“God,” Phil says. “Definitely having words with her.”

Dan smiles.

“I don’t know. It was almost – sweet?” He doesn’t know where he’s going with this. “Sweet in a _I’ve handled your dirty pants and I can still look you in the eye_ way?”

“Glad to know you bonded with my mum over dirty boxers,” Phil says. He fishes his phone out of his pocket when it starts to ring out.

Dan averts his eyes and looks into his glass of water. He doesn’t know why he does. He doesn’t need to. There have been plenty of times when he and Phil have taken calls for each other, or set the volume to loud-speaker so they could be involved – just because. That’s how wrapped up in each other they are. Or _were_. They _were_ wrapped up in each other. The past tense thing – it’s still a work in progress. If he practises it enough, he’s sure he’ll hone the skill. Dan taught himself to be ambidextrous once. He read somewhere that you can train yourself to eat with a knife and fork in the opposite hands in two weeks, if you try hard enough. He’s sure he can teach himself this, too.

He looks at Phil’s face as he talks. It seems softer.

“In the conservatory, I think,” Phil says to the person on the phone. He’s still sipping his tea. “Yeah, that one.” He glances at Dan, then sets his gaze on the countertop. He’s worrying at his bottom lip with his teeth. “God, I have no idea.” Should Dan still be here just listening? He feels an awful lot like he’s in the way. “Alright, I love you, too. Thank you!”

When Phil hangs up, he starts typing something on his phone. Dan listens to the sound of several text messages being sent. Suddenly, he realises he hasn’t done this. He hasn’t contacted anyone since the break-up yesterday. Only Doris, really. He hasn’t called his mum, or reached out to any friends, or had a moan on social media. He has no idea if that’s normal, and suddenly, he feels like maybe it isn’t.

“That was mum,” Phil says. “Looking for the spare HDMI cable for the TV in my room.”

“Oh,” Dan says. “That’s nice of her.”

“Yeah.” Phil smiles. He finishes the rest of his tea and then puts the cup in the sink. “Right, better finish the packing.”

So while Phil finishes packing to move out of their shared home, Dan tackles the washing up. He gets caught in a daydream. He always does when his hands are doing something his mind doesn’t have to pay attention to – like washing up. It’s in this daydream that he remembers it’s a Tuesday, and Tuesdays mean the milk-man has come to bring their milk. It’s nice to know the world keeps turning, even when Dan’s world has paused. He dries his hands and walks to the door to retrieve the bottles. As he does, he glances at Doris’ house. And, as expected, two full bottles of milk are sitting outside of her door. She always forgets to bring them in.

“Silly lady,” Dan says to himself, then heads inside. As he does, he makes a mental note to bring Doris her milk later.

-

They assess the van, all three of them. It’s a while before anyone speaks up. Then:

“God, Phil. It’s like you’re off to uni again,” Martyn says.

If that builds or shatters the tension, Dan can’t decide. Phil laughs, a real laugh, and gives his brother a shove to the arm.

“I did not take this much to uni,” he says.

They shouldn’t be joking around like this. But in a morbid, selfish way, Dan is glad that they are. He’s glad that Martyn isn’t giving him the cold shoulder. He’s even more glad that Martyn is willing to overlook the fact that Dan broke Phil’s heart yesterday, and can still have a pleasant conversation with him. If Martyn were anyone else, Dan would maybe be scared of this situation. He would prepare himself to get ‘the big brother talk’, or maybe worse. But Martyn is Martyn, and Martyn is making jokes about his little brother’s belongings sitting in the back of a beat-up van.

“I didn’t know you owned this much stuff,” Dan says, in shock. He really didn’t.

“I did,” Martyn says. He smiles fondly. “Phil can’t go into a shop without feeling like he has to bring something new home every time.”

Dan chuckles. “Right. I suppose I got too used to that.”

Phil is inside of the van now. He’s tying together a bin-bag full of clothes that looks like it’s about to burst open. When Dan looks away from the sight, Martyn is watching him. Dan looks back at Martyn, and he thinks, _Maybe this is it. Maybe this is where I get punched, or slagged off. Maybe I broke Martyn’s good nature._

But Martyn doesn’t punch him or slag him off. He says, “It’s a shame. I thought you two were really solid.”

It’s not a punch, but it still leaves Dan feeling winded. It leaves him a bit speechless as Martyn gently pats his shoulder and gets into the driver’s seat. So winded and speechless, in fact, that Dan doesn’t notice as Phil almost topples out of the back of the van.

“Careful!” Dan grabs Phil’s arm before he can fall onto his arse. “I really don’t want broken bones on my conscience as well.”

“I’m fine.” Phil steadies himself, then closes the doors to the back of the van – closes the doors on the belongings that were in their shared home just twenty minutes ago. The house will probably feel a lot bigger now.

“This is it, then,” Dan says.

“This is it,” Phil agrees.

Does he go in for a hug? Do you go in for a hug when saying goodbye to the person you spent ten years of your life with? He steps a bit closer, because maybe he should, but Phil backs away a bit. It’s so imperceptible, but Dan notices the movement like a flashing light.

“I’ll call you,” Phil says. “To sort out the tenancy agreements and stuff.”

“Right.” Dan stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Right, yeah. Don’t want those pesky landlords getting more money out of us.”

Phil smiles. Dan watches as Phil glances at the house. Their TV can be seen through the window – a rerun of Coronation Street is playing. Two characters are yelling at each other about – something. Dan doesn’t know. He’ll watch it later. Phil looks away then, and looks back at Dan. He’s still smiling, even as he takes a deep breath and says:

“Bye, Dan.”

And he gets in the van. Dan expects himself to cry. He expects to lose it as he watches that van drive farther and farther away. But he doesn’t. He watches until the van becomes a black dot in the distance. He continues watching until the black dot rounds a corner and disappears, and he still doesn’t cry.

“Well then,” he says to himself. 

He’s about to head inside. He has his own packing to do. Landlords to call, decisions to make, fish to feed. The world ends, and then it keeps on turning.

As he starts to head back inside, he glances at Doris’ house. The same bottles of milk are sitting outside of her door, untouched. Forgotten. Probably sour by now. Dan sighs. He walks to her house to do his first and last good deed of the day. He picks up the bottles of milk and knocks on Doris’ door.

As soon as it opens, he holds up the bottles and says, “Recognise these?”

But it’s not Doris looking back at him. It’s Alison, their neighbour. The only other neighbour that Doris can tolerate, apart from Dan and Phil.

“Oh!” Dan laughs. “Sorry, I just came to bring these to Doris. She forgot again.”

Alison’s eyes are a bit glassy, a bit red. She looks at the bottles, then looks at Dan’s face. Next, she does something that reaches the fire in Dan’s brain: she smiles a very sad, very heartbreaking smile.

“Maybe you should come inside, Dan…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eeeeee thank you to everyone who has shown support for this already! I am very excited to tell this story, and your kind words just make this more exciting! thoughts are definitely appreciated :)


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